Does yom with a number always refer to 24-hour days?

Published: 20 January 2013 (GMT+10)

morgueFile.com/poxy

J.C. from the United Kingdom writes:

Hi, I’ve used your search bar but can’t find the answer to my question. I’ve always thought that any time Yom is used with a number it means a 24hr day,
however in 2 Chronicles 21:19 it apparently says: ‘In the course of time, at the end of two years’, and later ‘he was thirty two years old’.
These, I’m told, are an example of yom with a number where it means year. Can you help?

To use one dubious case as an interpretive key to Genesis
1 is highly forced eisegesis.

Hi J.,

Thank you for your email.

This one has been a real team effort, as it has been a rather difficult verse to interpret. Perhaps the most important thing to note is that to use one dubious case
as an interpretive key to Genesis 1 is highly forced
eisegesis. And it wouldn’t make their case, since no one is defending creation over six years. Also, Genesis has additional supporting evidence for literal days
that the 2 Chronicles 21:19 lacks, such as evening and morning,
and the comparison with our working week in Exodus 20:8–11
(see The meaning of yôm in Genesis 1:1–2:4).

From the commentaries we consulted, the time factors in 2
Chronicles 21:19 have proved rather difficult to interpret. It appears that most translations go for a somewhat idiomatic rendering of yôm in
2 Chronicles 21:19 “at the end of two
years”.
They think that if the relevant yôm was taken in its most natural sense, it would specify the ‘chronic’ illness lasted two days, which obviously
doesn’t work in the light of 2 Chronicles 21:15. Note these
comments:

“21:18–19a According to the prophecy of v. 15, Jehoram was judged personally and died in agony. There is a textual problem in v. 19a. Jehoram is said to have
died after two days, which appears to contradict the picture of a protracted disease. The most common solution is to translate “two years” (NIV, NEB, KJV,
NRSV), following similar usage of “days” as “years” elsewhere in the Old Testament (cf.
Judg 17:10;
2 Sam 14:26). There is, however, no secure
position.”2

However, there is a different way to understand 2 Chronicles
21:19 that still makes sense of the illness being chronic while avoiding an unlikely interpretation of yôm. First, the ancient Greek translation of the
Old Testament known as the Septuagint (LXX) translates the phrase as “two days” (ἡμέρας
δύο). Second, the Old Testament commentators
Kiel and Delitzsch offer a different interpretation:
as a result of his chronic intestinal illness, Jehoram’s bowels came out two days before he died because of the illness. Presumably, this is what finally caused
him to die. It also means that v.19 doesn’t specify how long he had the illness—just that it was chronic, and two days before he died of it his bowels came
out because of it. So if both Kiel and Delitzsch and
the LXX translate the לְיָמִ֣ים שְׁנַ֗יִם (lyāmîm shnayîm) as “days”, it shows that it’s far from
conclusive that the word is anything but literal.

We also consulted Old Testament Hebrew expert Dr Ting Wang, and he
supported this interpretation:

“You make a good point that the LXX translates the phrase as ‘two days’ (ἡμέρας
δύο), and it is perhaps interesting that the LXX leaves out the word ‘end’ in its rendering of the Hebrew.

“At any rate, you are correct that the LXX is a witness that the bilingual (Hebrew/Greek) translators did not render the phrasing in
2 Chronicles 21:19 with ‘years’ (on
the other hand, it could of course also be argued that they are merely translating an idiom ‘woodenly’).

123rf.com/Eleonora Konnova

“Looking back a few verses, the phrase יָמִ֖ים עַל־יָמִֽים in
2 Chronicles 21:15 generally refers to a
protracted period of time (literally “days upon days”), but I think its placement at the end of the verse is significant. That is, I do not think it refers
to the entire illness as being protracted, but rather to the final process of the bowels “coming out” as taking place over days.

“Please notice the difference between the meanings of the NIV1984 and the KJV:

“‘You yourself will be very ill with a lingering disease of the bowels, until the disease causes your bowels to come out’
(2 Chronicles 21:15, NIV1984)

“‘And thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day’
(2 Chronicles 21:15, KJV).

“The NIV1984 takes the phrase as modifying the entire sickness, but I think the KJV is closer here—the phrase ‘days upon days’ occurring at the
end of the verse (in Hebrew) seems instead to modify the lamentable process of the bowels’ coming out (what an awful way to go).

“As such, it would not then be contextually required to render the שְׁנַ֗יִם
יָמִ֣ים of
2 Chronicles 21:19 as ‘two years,’ but
rather, taken all together, as informing us that the process of the emission of the bowels was completed by the end of the second day.

“The phrase וַיְהִ֣י לְיָמִ֣ים מִיָּמִ֡ים at the beginning of
2 Chronicles 21:19 (the LXX reverses the order
of the prepositions: καὶ ἐγένετο ἐξ ἡμερῶν
εἰς ἡμέρας) seems to be modifying the entire illness, and in Scripture is idiomatic for a protracted period
of time (although the placement of the Hebrew prepositions is a bit unusual).

Yôm is nowhere used to denote Jehoram’s age.

“So to sum up, with regard to 2 Chronicles
21:19, I think it is feasible to take the ‘two days’ as referring to the two days of the emission of the bowels, and the
וַיְהִ֣י לְיָמִ֣ים מִיָּמִ֡ים as referring idiomatically to the protracted extent of the entire
illness.”

However, the reference “he was thirty two years old” in
2 Chronicles 21:20 was much easier to solve. There is no usage
of either yôm (day) or shâneh (year) in the Hebrew of
2 Chronicles 21:20—it literally reads: “thirty and
two he was in his reigning”. However, 2 Chronicles 21:5
is explicit that Jehoram was 32 years old when he began to reign; it literally reads: “thirty and two years Jehoram in his reigning”, where
shâneh (year) is used. It is also confirmed by 2 Kings
8:17. Yôm is nowhere used to denote Jehoram’s age.

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Readers’ comments

Jack C.,Australia, 20 January 2013

I do a lot of my own translations from the Hebrew for the OT and Greek for the NT when I read Biblical texts to make sure the English translations are correct. I'm no expert in the knowledge and use of Hebrew (I am for Greek) but from what I understand the direct Hebrew translation of 2 Chronicles 21:19 is:

and he was for days from days as time to go forth of the end to days two they are coming forth bowels of him with illness of him and he is dying in ailments evil ones and not they made for him people of him burning as burning of fathers of him

So, I would translate the above to “normal” English as follows:

And after a very long time, two days before the end his bowels fell out due to his sickness, and then he died as a result of his evil illnesses, and his people made no burning for him, like the burning of his fathers.

The "two days" appears to be in agreement with your interpretation. I take the (correct) view that God is not the author of confusion so I always try to resolve apparent contradictions by referring back to the source documents and applying common sense and logic, and so far I have always succeeded in resolving them in doing so.

Johan M.,South Africa, 20 January 2013

Thank you for your objectivity in this matter, looking at all the possibilities. It is always refreshing and uplifting in this world, where people (especially some scientists) claim to be objective, but are so subjective, that their views and statements are completely unscientific.

Keep up the good work, and may our Lord Jesus bless it even more!

Richard L.,United Arab Emirates, 20 January 2013

With respect to the days of creation:

As noted by Shaun, the Genesis-1 days have further interpretive constraints due to the textual adjacency of “evening and morning” to those “days”, as well as the external interpretive constraint of Ex. 20:8–11. Dr. Sarfati, in his Refuting Compromise (1st ed), brings up a further contextual constraint: the issue of the first creation day, in Genesis 1:5, being “one day” [only rendered that way today in the NASB among commonly used literal-equivalence English versions] and being composed of an "evening” and a “morning” (pp. 76–77). Dr. Sarfati also notes that Basil the Great (pp. 112–113) and the writers of the Westminster Confession commentary (“Annotations”) (pp. 125–127) noted this definitional aspect of Genesis 1:5.

All this is a lot of visible emphasis by God that the Creation days were ordinary days in duration. (The first 3 days were literally “darkness-light” cycles, but the constraint of Ex. 20:8–11 requires them to be equivalent to the familiar 24-hour days of creation Days Four to Six.)

And there is yet another emphasis that God supplies to this point. Halliday and Hasan (Cohesion in English, 1976) say that much of perceived cohesion in text comes from anaphoric reference—a portion of text referring to text previously encountered by the reader/listener. Ordinal numbers do this.

The “second day” requires a “first day”, but the only place for it is the definitional “1 evening + 1 morning = 1 day” of Genesis 1:5. Thus that definition has to map onto the unstated “first day” and—by good-hermeneutics parallelism—onto the other (parallel) creation days.

This is not trivia. When God puts this much visible emphasis into what the creation days mean, we need to tremble and acknowledge.

Nic K.,Canada, 4 February 2013

hello,

I'm curious if the reference Hosea 6:2 has any viability in stating a number-day sequence that isn't meant to be taken literally?

What is it that would suggest that God would actually wait 72 hours before raising us up?

Shaun Doyle responds

Please see this entry on Hosea 6:2. The passage requires that yom refers to a 24-hour day to make any contextual sense.